Hmmm. In this case, I think there is not a lot of information presented by
the graphics. (I am a text-based person, but the descriptions make them seem
cool but uninformative (at least not able to add anything, although if I
didn't know what the words are I would probably misinterpret what was going
on here).
In any case, you would either have to use some very smart image analysing
algorithms, or get a person to compare. This is a limitation of the state of
the art.
There was another site, the Victorian government's "Better Health Channel" -
http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au - that simply had null alt text for images
that were links to content. So without a graphics version it was not likely
that people would know they had missed something. (So far as I know they have
fixed it now).
Another example of a site is the Australian Open Tennis site -
http://www.ausopen.com - this one is likely to be gone at the end of the
competition, which is the end of this week. It provides for different
versions according to browser capabilities, and mostly works (except
apparently they assume that the absence of javascript means the absence of
java support - clearly not true). It makes an intersting test case for
evaluation.
Cheers
Charles McCN
(Equivalent means "the same in some way". It doesn't need a strict definition
to be a useful concept in the context of this discussion, which can in part
lead to giving it a stricter one)
On Mon, 22 Jan 2001, Wendy A Chisholm wrote:
At this a.m.'s telecon I was trying to find a site that I had seen earlier
in the week. I have found out it was not a public site, so I will
summarize the issue that we found.
The site uses rollovers on menu items to display pictures. For example,
"architecture" is associated with an image of an indoor swimming pool,
"industrial design" is associated with an image of a station wagon with the
back door open so that you can see into the back of the car, "interior
design" seems to be associated with a modern, shiny kitchen.
The issue is that the links on their own "architecture, industrial design,
and interior design" give you no context. The images provide you with an
idea of what you might find if you follow the link. In the text-only
version they only provide the links.
The question we asked this morning is, "how would you determine if these
two sites (the text equivalent and the graphical with rollovers) are
equivalent?" They have the same links, but there is information presented
on the graphical page that is not available on the text-only.
--wendy
--
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
madison, wi usa
tel: +1 608 663 6346
/--
--
Charles McCathieNevile http://www.w3.org/People/Charles phone: +61 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI fax: +1 617 258 5999
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
(or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France)